Assuming that the ban on the discussion on the IE homeland problem
has now been lifted, here is an interesting persepective. IEist could
have been mistaken in seeing very close parallels between Greek and
Indic myths. The similarities could be attributable through culture
transfer in multiple layers through multiple agents instead of a
common IE origin. There is a huge time gap between the Mesopotamian
and Indus civilziation and that of classical Greece.
http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/home.html
"I (Holmes) became convinced years ago, when I was studying Sanskrit
in my historical linguistics doctorate program, that the Greek myths
had little to do with the spirituality of the Indic myths,"
Excerpts from Chapter 9 of Holme's book on Greek myths:
http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/GreekMyth/Chap9EasternInfl.htm
l
"The great antiquity of the Mesopotamian and Indus Valley
Civilizations, which predate activity in Greece by as more than two
thousand years, points to a slowly moving westward progression of the
basic ingredients of civilization, e.g. agriculture, animal breeding,
social regulation and the keeping of some sort of written records."
"Compared with the extended ritual use of the 'lingam' in India, the
Greek use is small. Any serious attempt to see further into its
original, basic meaning must be connected with a detailed study of
the history of the lingam in several millennia of Indic usage.
Nothing could be further from the Indic tradition than the phallic
poems put together in the first century B.C. by the clever versifier
of the little Latin collection titled "Priapea", which relegates "
"The linguistic connections with the Sanskrit family name Pramanthas
have been discussed elsewhere, and need not be repeated here. But the
fact that so basic a myth as that of Prometheus should be directly
connected with the fire-worshipping priests of the Indic cult of Agni
the Fire-God, even down to the actual names of the priestly class,
indicates an Eastern origin to this myth. Perhaps we should go
further, and search for traces of Eastern origins of pottery as a
craft, perhaps in the Indus Valley Civilization"
"Since this (changing shape) myth exists both in the Indic tradition,
and in a story which portrays a similar changing of form in Greece,
which incidentally is labeled as having an Egyptian origin, it may be
assumed that the Greek story is in some part influenced by Eastern
religious mythology."
M. Kelkar